Allergies, Drugs, and Teaching
The last two days I’ve been warn out. This started a few days ago when my allergies kicked into high gear. New Orleans is amazingly bad for allergies. This time of year all the oak trees shed this yellow pollen, and it covers everything. We have to sweep our porch everyday, as it is covered in yellow pollen, and it gets all over the cars, everywhere. Anyway, this means I often have a hard time sleeping, and sneeze quite a bit in the day. Most of my students also suffer in similar ways. So yesterday morning I took an allergy pill and while it stifled the allergies, the medicine made me feel terrible. I was groggy, and lost my mental edge. While I still feel my classes went well, I think the medicine made me less effective as a teacher. So today I didn’t take a pill, but because of the allergies I feel bad, and still have not been sleeping so well. My classes today went well, but this has made me think about all the factors that go into teaching and scholarship, many of which we have little or no control. Like now for example, I should be writing another section of BibleDudes but feel too wiped out to be inspired. And in class, with most of my students sneezing and suffering from allergies, this has to reduce the level of learning to a degree. I would like very much to just go home and sleep (it’s 1:30 in the afternoon) but because I teach a graduate level course tonight at Loyola, I have to prepare my lecture instead. On a more positive note, I’ve contacted via email the professor at Tulane who does work similar to mine, and we should have lunch soon. Thus far I’ve met the Bible scholars at Loyola, and UNO, so it will be nice to meet with him. I wonder if he can recommend any good allergy medicine.